Debbi Antebi

CHASING TIME

she lies still in bed
with heavy pillows placed
like a castle around her head,
looking perfectly comfortable
in the artificial fortress
but squirming inside
with restlessness and dread

she tries to chase time
like running after a thief
but calmly it slips away
without granting any relief
ironic, she thinks, how she spent
so many precious years
chasing short-lived passions
escaping her fears

what once lay ahead
like an infinite stretch
of dreams and possibilities
is now compressed
into the colored pills
lying next to her bed,
which she quickly grabs,
squeezing them tight
with a racing heart and shaky hands

© Debbi Antebi 2013

Debbi Antebi’s poems have appeared in Every Day Poets, unFold, The Bijou Poetry Review, Short, Fast, and Deadly, and The Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine, among others. She lives in Istanbul, Turkey, and blogs at http://debbiantebi.com/